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It hurts to fail in general. For PhD students, an academic failure is especially painful. Most PhD students are smart, hardworking, and ambitious. They have never failed a class. In fact, many of them have aced most of their classes and had a 4.0 GPA (or close to it) prior to joining a doctoral program. It’s hard to come to terms with the fact that you are not one of the best students anymore. On the opposite, you are one of the worst and a failure — or so it may appear to be. The pain is especially severe when you fail after many years in the program.Since failure hurts, you need to take some time off to grieve. But do it in a way that is healthy and productive. For example, one of my friends, after being kicked out from his program, went on a long car trip along the West Coast of the United States: from San Diego, CA all the way up to Vancouver, BC. This helped him clear his mind and decide what to do next. This was especially painful for him, as he was the only doctoral student in the department who thought that being a professor and doing research was the most wonderful career one could imagine. The faculty in the department were not fair to him. Unlike other students, he was 100% committed to the program and to a future career in academia. I think this is a great way to grieve: by travelling alone in a car long some scenic routes.After you grieve for some time, you need to come to terms that it is your ego that hurts the most. So after you bring your ego down to a healthy level, you need to realize that just because you failed in a PhD program, it does not mean you are any worse than those who graduated or that your life is now permanently damaged. It will all come back to normal after some time.Let me tell you about the six people who dropped out or were kicked out from my PhD program when I was there. Out of the six “failures”, two were by far the smartest, most knowledgeable people I have ever met. One was a “walking encyclopedia” with the memory of a data center: he knew so much in so many fields and could recall exact dates and numbers from his memory. On top of that, he knew several languages. The other one was a Physics major from a university that is often placed above Harvard. He was officially recognized as one of the best graduates of that university. I’ve read in newspapers about him. Another PhD dropout student was a successful business person and a multi-millionaire. He dropped out because he realized that it was too much work to get a doctorate degree and he didn’t think he had the time or the health to do this. The remaining two “failures” were kind of average. They left the program on their own after 1–2 years. One got a job with a company on Wall Street. The other one started working for a major consulting company. Both probably make 2 times as much as an average “successful” graduate of our program. The multi-millionaire guy is just retired. The walking encyclopedia guy got a government job that probably pays as much as an average professor makes. The guy who drove along the West Coast ended up getting two doctorates from two different schools in two different countries. This includes a doctorate in the field that he wanted from a top-10 university in that country. He works for different universities around the world, as he likes to travel. I haven’t heard from the Physics guy, so I don’t know what he is doing now.Graduating from a PhD program often does not take much intelligence and creativity. What often matters the most are perseverance and good people skills. In fact, some faculty resent doctoral students who are smarter than they are and make it very hard for them to graduate.So while your ego hurts, you will eventually realize that this may be your lucky ticket for a more rewarding career: financially and otherwise. You may end making more money outside academia. Also, despite what many doctoral students think, you may have more employment stability outside of academia. A good specialist in any field is rarely out of work. This is not always the case for PhD holders. There are so many of them who go for years without any meaningful full-time employment! Graduating with a PhD can become a curse. Full-time, tenure-track positions are hard to find. There are hundreds of applicants for one single opening in some fields. Most newly minted PhDs are willing to move across the globe for any reasonable employment opportunity at a university.But getting back on the academic track after you fail in a doctoral program is also an option. You can transfer to another doctoral program. Also, there are many doctoral programs offered by top universities in Australia and UK that allow you to get a doctoral degree without being a full-time student. You can study towards your doctorate degree while you work full time somewhere else.Personally, I’m happy I graduated, and I like my job. But I know my life would have turned out OK even if I hadn’t graduated. It turned out OK for virtually all of my classmates who “failed”. So there’s no reason why it all wouldn’t work out well for you as well. It may take some time to recover and get your life back on track, though. And this is perfectly fine. The odds are in your favor.

When I left academia over five years ago, the question of using “Dr.” or even “Ph.D.” alongside my name on my resume and job applications caused me a bit of an existential dilemma. I asked many people with doctoral degrees in and out of academia their thoughts on this matter and received a mixed bag of opinions. Some folks were on the side of leaving “Ph.D.” on my resume. It conveyed, as one person said to me, that I spent “X” number of years getting the degree, which I could translate into “real-world” speak as having the skills to manage and complete a multiyear project. (As you know, it takes about four or five years to complete a doctoral degree in certain disciplines, more years if your degree is in the humanities, as mine happened to be).My initial inclination after I left academia was to leave all signs of my doctoral degree off any job applications, echoing advice from other friends. Let’s face it, “Dr.” or “Ph.D.” alongside your name stands out and can at times be read by hiring managers in a negative light and may not even gain any traction for you during the hiring process. Hiring managers may assume: (1) that you might not want to commit yourself completely to a career outside of academia (i.e. “They will continue to look for academic opportunities, so why waste time our hiring time on them.”) or (2) that you are just not qualified compared to others who have worked in industry positions while you were working on your degree. The latter is mostly the reaction that I have experienced.The fact is, academia is a bubble, and most humanities doctoral programs, especially at Tier 1 research universities, speaking from experience, do not train their students to think about jobs outside of, academia. Unless you take the initiative to combine your studies with real-world work experiences—like starting a side-hustle, earning certification in a marketable skill, or learning how to code—you are at a considerable disadvantage if you decide to leave academia. While you might think that writing a “Ph.D.” behind your name or ending your cover letters with “Dr. So-and-So" signifies considerable achievement (don’t get me wrong, it does) and therefore your ability to pick up new skills quickly because of your intellect, real-world experience almost always trumps intellectual aptitude during the hiring process. To make things extra challenging for academic expats, most applications at many companies are now filtered through an ATS (application tracking system) to weed out job candidates that do not have the requisite skills or work experience, so writing that you have a "Ph.D." may not even matter very much, if at all. Of course there are always exceptions, especially if you have a doctoral degree in any of the STEM disciplines since you are more likely to have experience in data crunching and analysis, using Python or C++, or knowing how to—forgive the hyperbole—add, subtract, and perform other mathematical calculations. Often you will find job postings in finance or consulting firms that seek out people with doctoral degrees, but not in humanities disciplines.Right after I left academia, I did precisely the opposite of what I wanted to do. I wrote “Ph.D.” alongside my name on all my job applications and cover letters. Doing so did nothing to get my foot in anyone’s door. Full disclosure, I was applying for project management positions. Using your title depends on the type of job that interests you and whether you think it adds any value to your chances of getting an interview/job. My title was irrelevant in my case. What I learned quickly was how to create a narrative of your "professional persona" through your resume that honed in on your skillsets—skills gained from your graduate training—believe me, you have skills! You just need to know how to frame your experiences as relevant skills—to match the position that you want. This professional narrative takes time and some finessing (never lie on your job applications!); it must be written in real-world job speak (you must de-program yourself of academic jargon!). There are plenty of resources online to help you with words and technologies that are relevant in the business fields that interest you, so seek them out.My story ends well. Through what seemed like an extended period of job hunting, I found a job where my doctoral degree does help in my role. So I include “Ph.D.” after my name, primarily in my e-mail signature, business cards, and official letters. The work environment that you are in will ultimately dictate whether you need to use your title.My parting thought is that you need to be savvy with how you use or leave out your title. If you are finishing academia in the humanities, please do a lot of research and network like crazy! Your CV is meaningless; it is NOT a resume. Make LinkedIn your best friend, and optimize your profile on it (there are many resources on the Web to help you). Reaching out to people at companies that interest you can help you get a foot in the door. Be persistent without being annoying. Once your foot is in, you will figure out quickly whether your doctoral title matters. While you are waiting for the fish to bite (so to speak), I cannot stress enough how important it is to learn new things, like programming or data analysis or even relearning how to write in non-academic lingo. In this day and age, it is imperative for academic expats to pick up new skills to keep pace with the innovations in the job sector that you want to be in, and across all industries, more broadly. So keep on learning!

My initial answer wasCalTechObviously. Remember how he looks down upon Howie's MIT degree?But now I feel it wasn't so obvious, and I was merely speculating. Sorry for that!Edit[1][7Oct2013]In the episode The Love Car Displacement, Sheldon Cooper goes on to list his major degrees as "I'm Doctor Sheldon Cooper , B.S., M.S., M.A., Ph.D. and Sc.D. OMG (Oh My God) right?"So, perhaps his two Doctorate degrees are PhD and Sc.D.Now, coming to the question, where did he get his PhD from, one can only speculate as of now (7th Oct'13) because It has not been mentioned yet. All I could manage was:He received his first doctorate at the age of sixteen and he then spent four years on his second dissertation, before obtaining his current job.Source: Sheldon CooperThough there is no Stevenson Award in real world, from his claims in the show it does appear to be highly prestigious. An award of that stature and graduating college summa cum laude should rather guarantee a place in university and research environment of his choice.He looks down upon MIT, so we can safely assume his department of research is at least better recognised than MIT.He was living in the apartment since considerable time before Leonard joined CalTech.And there is no mention of other places he lived, in the USA, than Texas and Pasadena.From the above points, I have an inclination to conclude that Sheldon did join CalTech for his Graduate Studies and spent most of his time there. He must have also gained his degrees from CalTech only.Edit[2][6Mar2015]Well well well! The speculations can be laid to rest, as the man himself has shown us the degree! (Ref: Se8Ep17 "The Colonization Application")